Fossil fuels

This is the follow-on article to: “With cleaner Valley air, there can never, ever be any going back.” In the earlier post presented was information that consistent with the San Joaquin Valley air becoming less polluted over time (essentially between 1980 and 2016), there has been a far lower incidence of widespread, wintertime fog across … Read more

The below April 5, 2019 press release is from the Center for Biological Diversity. A California state judge has affirmed the constitutional right of residents concerned about air and climate pollution to challenge power plant siting decisions in their local Superior Court. In 2013 Earthjustice, Communities for a Better Environment [CBE] and the Center for … Read more

The below May 7, 2019 press release is from the National Parks Conservation Association. Of the 417 national parks evaluated, 96 percent of America’s national parks are plagued by significant air pollution problems. This and other alarming facts were included in Polluted Parks: How America is failing to protect our national parks, people and planet … Read more

Transportation needs fixing – plainly and simply put, it needs to be overhauled. Carbon emissions from this sector worldwide have now reached 29 percent, thereby contributing the largest percentage of emissions of all emissions-generating sectors, cars, trucks and buses being the primary contributors. In California, meanwhile, as environmental reporter Julie Cart at CALmatters has suggested, … Read more

Well, here it is May 3, 2019, day number five, the final day of the five-day Air Quality Awareness Week of 2019 and what I want to convey is this: All of the ground that was covered in this “Air Quality Awareness Week 2019” series could be expanded to more broadly apply to what is … Read more

The below Apr. 22, 2019 press release is from the Sierra Club. Today [Apr. 22, 2019], the Sierra Club released a newly updated electric vehicle (EV) guide at a time of increasing excitement around the expansion of the EV market in the United States. The evidence of growing user demand keeps mounting: 1 in 5 … Read more

The below Apr. 10, 2019 press release is from University of California at Berkeley. The Central Valley’s heavy wintertime tule fog – known for snarling traffic and closing schools — has been on the decline over the past 30 years, and falling levels of air pollution are the cause, says a new study by scientists … Read more

Buses are on the move … again. Though driving the revolution this time is electricity, not diesel fuel. That’s the difference. In Shenzen in China, as a matter of fact, the bus fleet is wholly electric, according to Clean Energy Canada in a press release issued on Mar. 21, 2019. And, just how many electric … Read more

Giant fans put in position, the flow of air through which would allow for the separating out of carbon from it. That carbon, in turn, through a number of intermediate processes, steps, to be converted into fuel for use in aircraft, automobiles, ocean-going vessels and trucks. An absurd notion? Apparently not. In a New York … Read more

Earth Day, which is just around the corner, is a time for celebrating Earth. One day during the year is designated for doing just that, this day being April 22nd. Every year here at the Air Quality Matters blog since 2013, a post (or two) has been devoted to this day. Ditto for 2019. In … Read more